Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado at a rally in Guanare in July 2024. (Andrea Hernández Briceño for The Washington Post)
It was about 1 a.m. when 17 Venezuelan military counterintelligence officers knocked down the door of a family home and barged in.
Officers pointed rifles at a 40-year-old woman and her 5-year-old son, she told The Washington Post. They pushed her 15-year-old son against the wall, handcuffed him and slapped his face until he revealed the name of a friend. Then they dragged him into a van.
The boy later told his mother that the officers beat him, putting his face on the floor and kicking him, she said. He told her he was hit in the chest, ribs and arms.
Mother and son spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because the son has received death threats.
The woman and her 5-year-old were detained overnight, but the 15-year-old was held for 20 days. He was unable to see his family for a week.
The boy is one of at least 120 minors to have been imprisoned by the security forces of President Nicolás Maduro since the autocratic socialist claimed reelection last month, according to multiple human rights organizations.
The children are among more than 1,600 people who have been arrested — rounded up at or near protests or taken from their homes in the night — in many cases without warrants. Their lawyers also have been targeted.
“Security forces are detaining people at a speed we had not seen in Venezuela’s recent history, even during the brutal repression in 2014 and 2017,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director for Human Rights Watch. “This is not just a clampdown on demonstrators. It’s a full witch hunt against anyone who dares criticize the government.”
The Venezuelan opposition, the Biden administration and leaders in Latin America and across the West have accused Maduro of electoral fraud. A Post analysis of voting machine receipts collected by opposition poll watchers indicates that his principal challenger, Edmundo González, received more than twice as many votes in the July 28 election.
All of the children, human rights lawyers say, have been charged with terrorism. More than 100 are still in custody.
The Post interviewed five families who say their teenage children were arrested. The Post has been unable to verify their claims independently.
All were held in juvenile facilities under strict, military-style control, they say. Some were forced to salute a picture of Maduro and to chant “Chávez lives” in homage to Hugo Chávez, the late founder of Venezuela’s socialist state.
All the teenagers told their families they were subjected to physical abuse. If they misbehaved, they said, their visits and food were restricted.
The families, whom The Post found through human rights organizations and news media coverage, all spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their safety.
The day after the Maduro-controlled electoral council declared his victory, Venezuela erupted in protests. Maduro, who had threatened the country with a “bloodbath” if he didn’t win, responded by arresting members of the opposition and anyone suspected of protesting. At least two dozen people were shot to death; one was 15.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab, Venezuela’s chief law enforcement official, did not respond to a request for comment.
Venezuela has experienced waves of unrest and mass detentions in the past; Maduro was already being investigated by the International Criminal Court for the alleged torture and extrajudicial killing of political opponents. But rights groups say this is the most political prisoners registered in a single campaign.
The number of children arrested has outpaced the figures recorded during even the region’s most notorious campaigns of repression. The Argentine military dictatorship of the 1970s and ’80s arrested 151 over seven years. The regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested 956 children from 1974 through 1990, or about 56 a year.
Maduro has arrested at least 120 in less than a month.
Most come from working-class neighborhoods, historic strongholds of support for Chávez and Maduro that appear to have switched to the opposition last month. None have been given access to a private attorney, the pro bono legal assistance group Foro Penal says. Many were held for at least a week before they were allowed to contact their families.
“Before, at least we had access to the people arrested and be present if there were any complaints of torture,” said Alfredo Romero, president of Foro Penal. “Everyone is terrified of speaking out.”
‘You’ll never see him again’
After the 15-year-old was taken away, his mother and younger brother were taken to a government-owned house in Barinas, a northwestern cattle-rearing state, she said.
Masked and armed men threatened to take the 5-year-old away, too, if she spoke out. You’ll never see him again, they warned, the woman said.
She was interrogated for five hours and let go, she said. But her 15-year-old was held and charged with terrorism, without a private lawyer present.
His father, who escaped Venezuela for the United States and lives in Nevada, said his son might have been a target because he posted a photo of himself on social media wielding a toy gun and wearing his father’s motorcycle goggles, a cloth covering part of his face. He had been playing cowboys with a friend, his father said.
The boy has never been anywhere near a protest, his father said. Not only is he too young — “his voice hasn’t even changed” — but the family has already suffered the government’s repression: In 2017, his oldest son was shot dead at a demonstration; another was wounded.
The 15-year-old was presented remotely to a judge in Caracas and charged with terrorism, he told The Post. He was pressured to record a video admitting to protesting. “I refused,” he said, “and they hit me harder.”
In detention, he said, he was held in a hot, crowded room with only a single open toilet.
“My friends there, they all got sick from the food. They spent nights vomiting” he said. “The security guards kept saying there were no doctors or medicines.”
The beatings and stress caused the boy to suffer a medical emergency, his family said. He was taken in handcuffs to a hospital; his family was not notified.
Human rights lawyers have struggled to keep up with the caseload. Dozens of families are contacting Foro Penal daily.
Lawyers from the assistance group Fundehullan were working with at least five minors when they began receiving threats, they said. Now in hiding, they’re guiding families over encrypted WhatsApp calls.
“There is a targeted action against human rights activists,” said Luis Armando Betancourt, a lawyer in Carabobo state, where at least 23 teenagers have been arrested. “Even with the express authorization from the families, they are not allowing us access to anyone.”
Extortion and fear
After the 15-year-old was arrested, his father said, he received a text message from a security official demanding $10,000 for his release. Then a national guardsman said he could help expunge his record for $500.
“I would move heaven and Earth for my son,” the father said. “But how can I possibly afford that if I make $1,800 a month in the Las Vegas restaurant I work in?”
When a couple from La Guaira tried to visit their son in a Caracas prison, they said, guards told them they would have to pay $3 for his food and $5 to visit for an hour. “We had to choose,” the boy’s father said. “It was either a hug or his food, and we got him some food. We cannot afford more.”
One 15-year-old boy told his mother that he and his fellow detainees are sleeping in shifts to watch out for one another. “He doesn’t want to tell why they are so scared,” she told The Post.
Another 15-year-old boy said detainees were being forced to say “Chávez lives.” He refused, his mother said. Chávez doesn’t live, he told her. He’s dead. Why would I say that?
The boy, already weak from a severe beating, his mother said, was forced to do 100 push-ups. “He told me his entire body hurt, but the guards didn’t let me look under his shirt,” she said.
Several families said they were planning to leave the country as soon as their children are released.
“I just want to go live where my dad lives,” said the boy whose father lives in Nevada. “I am not safe here anymore.”
Samantha Schmidt contributed to this report.
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Publish date : 2024-08-26 13:00:00
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